Today for dinner: French Onion Soup
Let me set the record straight: I may hate on Progresso’s stupid “soup diet” ads, but I love me some good soup. The nice thing about making a big pot of homemade soup on a Sunday night is that it can last you all week, doesn’t have the bad fillers and heart-attacking amount of sodium like canned soup, and only gets better after a couple of days in the fridge.
French Onion soup is a particular favorite of mine, and I used this Martha Stewart recipe (although there generally aren’t huge variations in recipes for French Onion, but LOVE her rustic presentation in the photo):
Ingredients
Serves 6
- 4 tablespoons unsalted butter
- 2 pounds yellow onions, sliced 1/4-inch into half circles
- 1 teaspoon sugar
- 1 tablespoons all-purpose flour
- 1/2 cup dry sherry
- 3 cups Homemade Beef Stock
- 2 teaspoons chopped fresh thyme or 3/4 teaspoon dried thyme
- Salt and freshly ground black pepper
- 1 small French baguette, sliced crosswise into 1/2-inch pieces
- 8 ounces Gruyere cheese, grated on the large holes of a box grater (about 3 cups)
Directions
- Melt butter in a large Dutch oven or heavy pot on medium-low heat. Add onions. Spread them out in as thin a layer as possible. Sprinkle with sugar, and cook, stirring just as needed to keep onions from sticking, until they are melting and soft, golden brown, and beginning to caramelize, about 1 hour.
- Sprinkle flour over onions, and stir to coat. Add sherry, stock, and thyme, and bring to a simmer. Cook, partially covered, for about 30 minutes, to allow the flavors to combine. Season with salt and pepper to taste.
- Meanwhile, lightly toast bread under a broiler; set aside. Ladle hot soup into six ovenproof bowls. Arrange the bowls on a baking pan. Place 1 or 2 slices of toasted bread over each bowl of soup. Sprinkle 1/2 cup grated cheese over bread in each bowl, and place under the broiler until cheese is melted and crusty brown around the edges. Watch carefully that bread doesn’t burn. Serve immediately.
One hour may seem excessive for cooking the onions, but the longer and slower you cook the onions, the more delicious they will become (caramelized onions are one of those recipe components, like scraped vanilla bean, that cannot help but add some serious deliciousness). Plus, you can do what I did and watch a movie while they cook, just getting up to stir occasionally. I did not use the sugar or flour (neither are needed, frankly), but per one of the commenters, did add some balsamic vinegar into the onions closer to the end of their cooking, which adds a nice sweet-ish flavor as well as some depth. This recipe uses sherry, which makes many soups QUITE tasty (lobster bisque, holla), although I have also made some good French Onion soup using red wine instead.
I also did not make my beef stock from scratch - it’s a lovely idea, but I can only spend so many hours in the kitchen. TJ’s has a great liquid stock that I warmed up and added the thyme to before putting it all with the onions. I of course used Ezekiel bread in lieu of the French bread, although if you want to skip bread altogether, you can easily just pile a bunch of grated cheese on top of the soup before throwing it in the broiler (as I did for my seconds).
Oh, and one more thing I always do with soup, although it’s not mentioned in the recipe…once all main ingredients are in (save, perhaps, the last little bits of salt and pepper to tinker and perfect the flavor), I bring the soup to a complete boil before letting it simmer for a good 20+ minutes. It may be my imagination, but I think it brings the flavor out as well as thoroughly combines the components.
Veganize it! Obviously this is a very easy recipe to convert for vegetarians and vegans. Simply use vegetable stock instead of beef (if you’re feeling ambitious, Martha has this one for homemade veggie stock, just use extra oil instead of butter), and cook the onions in Earth Balance (you could use oil as well, I just think Earth Balance would just give it more of that nice buttery caramelized quality). I am definitely not an expert on soy cheeses, but you would be looking for a Swiss cheese-ish substitute, although the soup stands well on its own as well.
- Posted by Tanya
